Joe Gomez transfer question set to arise again after Liverpool star's unhappy anniversary

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Joe Gomez has been on the books at Liverpool for over 10 years, but despite a successful career there will always be regrets about his injuriesIt won’t have been an anniversary he’d have celebrated, but last month marked 10 years since one of the most important moments of Joe Gomez’s career.Signed from Charlton Athletic as an 18-year-old in the summer of 2015, Gomez had surprised everyone by holding down a place in Brendan Rodgers’ Liverpool team in the early weeks of the following season, showing plenty of promise even though the manager’s time was ticking away.When Jurgen Klopp replaced the Northern Irishman in the October international break he was looking forward to working with someone who was establishing himself as one of best young English defenders in the Premier League. Then everything changed.READ MORE: Liverpool are really missing Luis Diaz but I hope his former team-mate proves Arne Slot wrongREAD MORE: Liverpool star 'invisible' in scathing verdict as Alexis Mac Allister dream comes true“It seems to be okay,” was the view of England Under-21s manager Gareth Southgate after a stricken Gomez had to be taken off with 10 minutes remaining of his team’s 3-0 win over Kazakhstan in Coventry.

“We were a bit concerned at first but we’re hopeful it’s nothing too serious.”Southgate might later have become a knight of the realm, but he’s no doctor. Gomez had in fact ruptured his anterior cruciate ligament and wouldn’t play again for 14 months.Incredibly, one day after Gomez’s injury, Danny Ings would also rupture his ACL in Klopp’s first Liverpool training session.Ten years on, Ings finds himself at Sheffield United after spells with Southampton, Aston Villa and West Ham, showing diminishing returns through each spell despite his hard work.Yet Gomez remains at Liverpool as Anfield’s great survivor, and a Champions League and two-time Premier League winner.

Bar the Europa League, he has won every competition he’s played in for the club.Recent changes have only further established Gomez as the longest-serving player at Liverpool, but there are times over the past year or so when it looked for all the world as though his Reds career was coming to an end.Strong links with Brighton and AC Milan at the closure of the most recent transfer window eventually came to nothing, thanks in part to the delays and subsequent collapse of the Marc Guehi move.Before that, back in Arne Slot’s first Premier League game in charge at Ipswich last August, Gomez was left out of the squad as he explored his options over potential moves to Newcastle and Aston Villa.In most cases players simply don’t come back from that sort of thing. Usually either a club’s determination to sell or a player’s own ego comes to the fore and forces through transfers or periods of exile.As a case in point Raheem Sterling, whose Liverpool career overlapped with Gomez’s for about three weeks in 2015, is remarkably still on Chelsea’s books.Yet with Gomez on each occasion, and indeed on others when he has been linked with moves away, there has never been any doubt that the south east Londoner - who is just as popular with fans as he is team-mates - would return to the fold as a valued member of the squad.The question now though is should he be valued more highly, and is it time to seek that value elsewhere?Having made a career-high 51 appearances in the 2023/24 season - numbers which, thanks to his versatility, helped him force his way into Southgate’s senior England squad for Euro 2024 - Gomez had begun life under Slot on the crest of a wave, only to quickly find himself cast as third choice behind Jarell Quansah and Ibrahima Konate on the list of Virgil van Dijk’s potential centre-back partners.Quansah’s form and Konate’s fitness would eventually see him move up that list, but after an impressive few weeks in November and December of last season - heralded by a superb display off the bench against Brighton - injury would strike again.And injury is ultimately and unfortunately the watchword you have to keep returning to with Gomez.His is a Liverpool career spanning over 10 years, but when you compare it to another player who spent a decade at Liverpool and suffered an ACL injury in Lucas Leiva, he has made almost 100 appearances fewer than the Brazilian.Virgil van Dijk - yet another with an ACL injury in his past, but who signed two-and-a-half years after Gomez in January 2018 - is closing in on having played 100 games more than his 2019/20 Premier League title winning partner.It is tempting to wonder just what would have become of Gomez without that first injury in October 2015, and then a subsequent leg fracture at Burnley in December 2018, then most devastatingly of all a freak and damaging knee injury in England training - yep, overseen by Southgate again - in November 2020 .Yet it speaks volumes about the esteem that Gomez is held in by supporters that every time he comes back from those blows you’ll find those calling for him to get a run in the team.With the Guehi deal by no means certain to be completed in January and concerns over Konate’s long-term future, it remains to be seen what the future holds for Liverpool’s great survivor.Gomez is a player who has got off the canvas so often for the club and enjoyed the highest of highs after doing so, but the nagging doubt remains that injuries have robbed him of many more successes.It has been 10 years of joy and pain, and we wait to see what happens next.This article appears in the November edition of the Blood Red magazine - order your copy hereLiverpool knocks 50% off kits and merchThis article contains affiliate links, we will receive a commission on any sales we generate from it.